CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM Watson Health
(NYSE: IBM) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard are
expanding their partnership to help clinicians better predict the
possibility of serious cardiovascular diseases. By working with
genomics, clinical data and AI, IBM and the Broad Institute hope
this three-year project will help provide doctors with tools to tap
into the potential of genomics data, and better understand the
intrinsic possibility an individual has for a certain disease.
Equipped with this knowledge, health professionals can potentially
intervene and help to reduce this risk.
This initiative will incorporate population-based and
hospital-based biobank data, genomic information, and electronic
health records to build upon and expand the predictive power of
polygenic scoring, otherwise known as genetic risk scoring. IBM and
the Broad Institute are aiming to build algorithms that can
pinpoint and learn from trends in these data points, and then
indicate a potential predisposition to certain health conditions.
The project will also plan to make insights and tools widely
available to the research community, including methods to calculate
an individual's risk of developing common diseases based on
millions of variants in the genome.
Ultimately, this AI technology will aim to produce models which
bring together and analyze a multitude of genetic risk factors
within an individual's genome, along with existing health records
and biomarkers, to help clinicians more accurately predict the
onset of complex and often fatal conditions in patients, such as
heart attacks, sudden cardiac death, and atrial fibrillation.
This is the next evolution of genomic research between IBM
Watson Health and the Broad Institute. In 2016, the two
organizations announced a five year initiative to help researchers
use machine learning and genomics to better understand why and how
cancers become resistant to therapies.
"We're working directly with the physician-scientists at the
Broad Institute to evolve how AI can help unlock undiscovered clues
about human health," said John
Kelly, senior vice president, IBM Watson Health. "We've
built a deep expertise in applying AI to understand the
complexities and meaning of immense amounts of data, such as
genomics and health records. Our latest collaboration will combine
these capabilities with clinical insights, and refine how
technology can provide explainable and valuable insights to
clinicians as they study and treat serious conditions such as
cardiovascular disease."
The developed AI technologies will require innovation on three
fronts: the ability to integrate several disparate types of health
data for modeling; the potential to transfer and apply models on
patients from different health systems; and the power to
communicate insights and explain generated insights and analysis
results to patients and doctors in a way that is meaningful and
actionable.
Built for specific health conditions, such as cardiac arrest,
these algorithms are designed to identify when a confluence of low
incidence and rare genetic events come together and combine with
clinical, physiological and environmental factors to form a
significant risk factor for a disease. Additionally, these models
will learn from various multitudes of disparate data, including the
longitudinal and clinical records of individuals, electronic
medical records, DNA sequencing and genetic factors. The risk
analysis will aim to help health professionals identify and
quantify patients' risk for cardiovascular conditions, as well as
the genetic factors contributing to that risk. To better improve
how this intelligence can be communicated and used in clinical
settings, IBM and the Broad Institute will work closely together to
incorporate direct feedback from doctors and caregivers.
"We're excited to build upon the advances we've made in
polygenic risk scoring utilizing vast amount of genomic data," said
Sekar Kathiresan, director of the
Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)
and institute member and director of the Cardiovascular Disease
Initiative at the Broad Institute. "By coupling clinical data with
genomic data, there is an exceptional opportunity to make polygenic
risk scoring more robust and powerful, and ultimately
transformative for patient care. Such transformation could never
happen without these kinds of partnerships."
The work between the Broad Institute and IBM Watson Health will
initially be undertaken for three years. It will encompass a team
of scientists from the Broad Institute, which was founded in 2004
with the mission to improve human health by using genomics to
advance our understanding of the biology and treatment of disease,
and to lay the groundwork for a new generation of therapies. The
team will also include researchers and scientists from IBM, which
has built a strong foundation of applying technology to some of the
most pressing healthcare challenges facing society – from
neurodegenerative disease and brain modeling to genomics and
oncology.
About IBM Watson Health
Watson Health is a business unit of IBM that is dedicated to the
development and implementation of cognitive and data-driven
technologies to advance health. Watson Health technologies are
tackling a wide range of the world's biggest healthcare challenges
including cancer, diabetes, drug discovery and more. Learn more at
www.ibm.com/Watson/health.
CONTACT: Erin Lehr Angelini,
edlehr@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM Watson Health